IBM buying SaaS e-mail to bolster Bluehouse platform
IBM is planning to buy the e-mail service assets of Outblaze, a large Hong Kong application service provider, to help beef up its Bluehouse social-networking and collaboration platform, IBM said late Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Outblaze is privately held and says it supports more than 76 million users across 480,000 domains with its white label e-mail, social-networking and collaboration services.
Combined, the Outblaze and Bluehouse technology will enable enterprise customers to tap IBM for "all their messaging needs, whether on-premise or online," and smaller companies will get a "simple to acquire" and integrated bundle of tools, IBM said in a statement.
"Unlike most of IBM's recent software acquisitions it looks like Outblaze is as much about a volume customer list as technology," said James Governor, a UK-based analyst with Redmonk, via e-mail Friday. "In the game of counting mailboxes, IBM was clearly seeing real competition from new market entrants. That said, high-volume, simple hosted mail was a hole in IBM's portfolio."
IBM spokesman Mike Azzi said Friday that the company plans to reveal more details about how Outblaze's software will fit into Bluehouse next week, during the Lotusphere conference in Orlando.
Bluehouse, which is now in beta, focuses on making online meetings, networking and file sharing easier and more effective. The platform, which should play a prominent role at Lotusphere, is part of IBM's overall push toward delivering services from the cloud to customers.
IBM is starting to make a habit of announcing acquisition plans just before Lotusphere. Last year, the company revealed its intent to purchase the Canadian company Net Integration Technologies. The vendor's technology was eventually rolled into IBM's Lotus Foundations software appliances for SMBs.
IDG News Service
Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world
On Twitter now
ibm
Powered by Twitter
jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough
pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients
Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process
mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes
David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features
sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake
Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
Join the conversation here
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.
